Those who upgraded soon discovered that new maps were seriously lacking. There weren’t many points of interests, landmarks or directions on it. The map in India only had standard and satellite view and no directions, rendering it practically useless to many.

Thousands of iPhone users in India were up in arms on Thursday when they discovered that the new map application on their devices were next to useless after they upgraded to the latest operating system from Apple. The iOS6 update released yesterday, has left out the familiar Google maps that has been on the phone since 2007. The application was replaced with the native Apple maps application. Those who upgraded soon discovered that new maps were seriously lacking.

There weren’t many points of interests, landmarks or directions on it. The map in India only had standard and satellite view and no directions, rendering it practically useless to many.

Social media is flooded with negative reviews from early adopters. The older maps on iOS used Google’s map data. However, the company which has acquired 3 mapping services companies, has replaced the data with its own data in the upgraded version.

Apple and Google have been at loggerheads ever since the search giant launched its own mobile operating system- Android.

If its any relief, the problem is not unique to India. New maps have been criticized widely in Apple’s largest market, the United States, too. For instance, a report in New York Times quotes entrepreneur Anil Dash as saying:

“Apple had used their platform dominance to privilege their own app over a competitor’s offering, even though it’s a worse experience for users.” The report further states that “he complained that a search for “Bloomberg” failed to turn up the company’s headquarters, and one for an address on Lexington Avenue pulled up a street in Brooklyn, even when “NY, NY” was specified.”

Going by Apple’s priorities, it is likely to fix the maps in the US first and it could be a long wait before it gets around to fixing these parts of the world.